


Left Behind

by nikkiRA



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, aftermath of Gansey's death, because i like to Suffer, yeah it's about as depressing as you're thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5877925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They always say that it’s like you can’t breathe. Like you forget how. But that’s not true. I remember how to breathe. The problem is I don’t remember why I have to. I don’t remember what the point of breathing is.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> cries for days over Richard Gansey III what a NERD i am in mourning and trk isn't even out yet

When Ronan opens the door he doesn’t expect to see Blue. If he’s being honest, though (which he usually always is) he’s happy to see her. He’s happy to see anyone.

“I want you to get me drunk,” she says, pushing past him. He stares after her small frame.

“What?” Not the greatest response he’s ever had, but he’s not exactly on top of his game, right now.

“Alcohol. Mind altering substances. I’ve seen almost eight health class movies about how much it can fuck up your brain. I want it.” There is a challenge in her eyes, but it’s not necessary. He goes into his bedroom and finds his stash of liquor

When he gets back out she is sitting on his bed, crying. Ronan is not and probably never will be good at words of comfort, so all he does is hand her a bottle of beer. She looks at it with disdain.

“I wanted something stronger.”

“You’re four feet tall and fifty pounds, Sargent, and you’ve never been drunk before. Beer will be fine.”

“I’m neither of those things,” she says, but she takes the beer anyway. Ronan pulls a bottle opener from his pocket and hands it to her.

“Do you always carry a bottle opener in your pocket?”

“Never know when you might need one.”

Blue takes a long swig of the beer, before making a face and coughing loudly. Ronan pounds her back.

“Jesus Christ, maggot, slow down.”

“I don’t want to,” she says very quietly.

Gansey’s funeral was today.

She takes another drink. They don’t speak again until she’s done her first beer and he’s finished his second.

“What happens if we run out of alcohol?” She asks.

“You die from alcohol poisoning and I take a nap.”

“Not in that order, I hope.” She takes another beer from him. “Can’t you dream up something that tastes better?”

“I’m not drinking fruity girly drinks with you, Sargent.”

“Drinks don’t have a gender.”

“Can it, Blue.” This comes out much harsher than he had intended. Blue wipes her nose.

“I’d leave if you weren’t the only place to get alcohol.”

“I am aware.”

No one wants to be around him, today.

Gansey would have wanted to.

He breaks out the vodka.

“Where are Adam and Noah?”

“Parrish is at his place,” he says, trying not to sound too bitter about this. “I don’t know where Noah floated off to.”

Blue grabs the vodka out of his hand and drinks straight from the bottle. She grimaces. “This stuff is awful.”

“Then don’t drink it. You’ll waste it.”

Blue glares at him and takes another shot out of the bottle. They both pass the bottle back and forth between each other. “Aren’t you supposed to mix this with something?”

“Too much effort. Same result.”

“How efficient.” He thinks she might be mocking him. He can’t seem to make himself care.

“What’s going on with you and everyone?”

He leans back on his hands. The room is blurry, slightly smudgy. Like a room full of Noah’s.

What is going on with them? Adam has avoided him since Gansey died. He hasn’t seen Noah much. It’s like he’s lost all of them. Everyone except Blue.

The thought is surprisingly comforting.

“Who the fuck knows,” is what he says. Blue purses her lips.

“Vodka,” she says.

“You should slow down.”

“Afraid I’m going to outdrink you?”

“I’m twice your fucking size, Sargent.”

Blue takes the vodka from him anyway. “Now is not the time for you to suddenly grow a conscience and become responsible, Lynch.”

If he had to pick one person, it wouldn’t have been Blue Sargent. But he would rather have her then no one.

_You can’t leave me too._

“If you drink yourself to death it’ll be your own fault, midget.”

“That’s offensive.”

“I’m offensive.”

Blue rolls her eyes.

A little while later and Ronan is verging on a drunk he has never been before. Blue is just as bad. At one point she gets up and starts rummaging through Gansey’s drawers until she pulls out his salmon polo.

“I hated this fucking shirt.” It is strange to hear her swear; she does it so rarely that the word seems much harsher than when he says it. She pulls it on over her head. He can’t say that salmon is her colour, but to be fair he doesn’t think salmon is anyone’s colour.

Except Gansey’s.

She buries her nose in the collar and inhales deeply. Fresh tears start flowing down her cheeks. She sits back down beside Ronan, but she doesn’t take the vodka back. She must have reached her limit.

Blue. Always sensible.

“They always say that it’s like you can’t breathe. Like you forget how. But that’s not true. I remember how to breathe. The problem is I don’t remember why I have to. I don’t remember what the point of breathing is.”

Ronan is quiet. He isn’t entirely sure what he could say. Noah would know. Even Adam would be better.

She is crying freely, hands bunched in the salmon polo. Ronan shifts closer, as much for his benefit as for hers. Blue leans into him, and he wraps an arm around her, rubbing her arm. She smells like Gansey.

“Adam’s avoiding you, isn’t he?”

He nods.

“Sorry.”

He shrugs, as if he isn’t bothered by this.

She rests her head on his shoulder. “I wish I had never met you guys. I wish I had stayed away like my mother said.”

He never had that option. Gansey was always the best thing about him.

“I need more alcohol.”

He doesn’t stop her this time. They pass the bottle back and forth until Blue pushes it away and he finishes it. She lies down, burying her nose in the pillows.

“How long do you think it will be until they stop smelling like him?”

The room is blurry, his head is blurry, her words are blurry. He’s not sure anyone on the face of the planet has ever been as drunk as he is now. He feels sick. But it’s not enough. It’s not enough because it still hurts. He knows that a lot of alcoholics drink to forget, but it is impossible for him to forget. He can remember it so clearly. He can’t remember his middle fucking name or his goddamn phone number right now but he remembers exactly the way his voice broke when he told Blue to kiss him and he remembers the look of pain on his face and he remembers with remarkable clarity when he stopped breathing.

Blue has buried under the blankets and has them pulled up to her nose. He admires the way she cries; she hasn’t really stopped since she got here but it is quiet crying, like she is keeping it to herself.

He remembers the broken look on her face. He remembers the broken look on Adam’s face, before Adam stopped looking at him. He probably had the exact same face.

He watches Blue inhale the scent of mint and shampoo and he thinks that pride has never really been worth it, anyway.

He lies down next to Blue, who shifts and buries her head in his collarbone and he doesn’t care much, even when her quiet tears sink through his shirt.

* * *

“Well,” Adam says when he opens the door. “Of all the things I had expected to find here, this was not one of them.”

Things he expected to see: alcohol, and lots of it – check. Ronan Lynch, possibly still drunk – half check.

Things he did not expect to see: Ronan Lynch in the bed of Adam’s dead best friend, with his arm around said best friend’s girlfriend.

It’s not like this particularly concerns him, because Ronan is not remotely straight and he got over Blue ages ago, but he’s seen a lot of very strange things in his life, and Ronan Lynch spooning Blue Sargent in Gansey’s bed is definitely one of the strangest.

Blue stirs at his voice. She is wearing one of Gansey’s shirts, and her eyes are swollen and red from crying. Ronan wakes up when Blue slides out from under his arm. He doesn’t look much better, although at least he isn’t wearing Gansey’s clothes.

“Parrish,” he says in greeting. Adam supposes he probably deserves the way Ronan will not look at him.

“How much did you two have to drink last night?”

With such impeccable timing that, had circumstances been different, he would have thought she’d planned it, Blue leans over the side of the bed and vomits.

As if on cue, Ronan gets up and walks into his room, closing the door behind him. Adam stares at it and considers, but he stays outside with Blue.

He’s not proud, but at least he’s honest.

“What the hell happened here?”

Blue is holding her head. “I got really drunk.”

“And the cuddling?”

Her answer doesn’t change. “I got really drunk.” She doesn’t look like she’s in a position to clean up her mess, so Adam finds some paper towels. Not like it’s the first time he’s ever had to clean up vomit.

“Where were you?” She asks quietly.

“My apartment.”

“Why didn’t you come here?”

_Because this place is so overwhelmingly Gansey that I can barely breathe._

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you avoiding Ronan?”

_Because I didn’t want him to see me completely lose it._

“Why does it matter to you?”

She hugs Gansey’s pillow. “Now is not the time for us to get distant.”

She’s right, and he knows it.

“Nice shirt.”

“I threatened to burn this once. Who the hell wears a salmon polo? It’s awful.”

Adam sits next to her. He also grabs one of Gansey’s pillows. “One time I told him that someone as rich as him had no excuse to have such awful fashion sense.”

She reaches out and grabs his hand.

“I knew this was coming.” She does not say we, although she means it. “And it still happened. What’s the point in having a family of psychics if they can’t change the future that they see?”

She smells like Gansey. He hates it.

He loves it.

“It’s not your fault, Blue.”

“Then whose fault is it? Who can I blame?”

Blame won’t solve anything, but he’s pretty sure if he said that she’d punch him.

“How drunk did you get last night?”

“Drunk enough that cuddling with Ronan seemed like a totally sane idea. No offence.”

If he measured drunkenness by those standards he must have been wasted for the past three months.

“Did it help?”

She shakes her head. “Not at all. Alcoholism is too expensive, anyway.”

“That’s a rich person disease if ever there was one.”

They both look in the direction of Ronan’s door.

“Have you seen Noah?” She says eventually. Adam shakes his head. He feels bad that he wasn’t here – he figured he would be, that he wasn’t really leaving Ronan alone.

If Blue hadn’t come he would have been.

“Noah?” Blue starts calling. “Noah, are you here?”

He gets up and goes into Ronan’s room.

“What the _fuck?”_

There are hornets everywhere.

“What the fuck, Ronan? Why are these here?”

Ronan is lying on his bed. Chainsaw is flying around, fighting the hornets. Ronan seems unbothered by them, just the occasional swat every time one comes near him.

“Because it doesn’t matter anymore,” is his answer. Adam is about to respond when he hisses in pain. One of them had stung his deaf ear.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters. He takes off one of his shoes and starts using it to kill the bugs while Ronan watches. “Are you just going to lie there?” Adam asks, to which the answer is apparently yes.

“Next time you could at least dream me up a fucking fly swatter,” he says. Ronan doesn’t answer this.

Eventually he and Chainsaw take care of all of them. It is the closest he has ever felt with the bird.

“Can you not do that again?”

Ronan just keeps giving him a blank stare. “Did you leave Blue?”

Adam sighs and sits down on the end of the bed. “She’s trying to find Noah.”

Ronan doesn’t answer this, either. Chainsaw flies over and he starts petting her absentmindedly.

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” Adam says softly. _I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you at the worst possible time._

Ronan still does not respond.

“Jesus Christ, Lynch, it is so hard to talk to you!”

“Apparently.”

This is not what should be happening. This is not what they should be doing. Fighting, at a time like this.

“Look,” he says. “I just wanted to break down by myself.”

“How’d that go?”

“About as well as you’d expect.” The night would have been so much better if he had spent it with Ronan; at least he would have had someone for after the nightmares.

He kicks at a dead hornet on the ground. He thinks of what Ronan had said – because it didn’t matter anymore.

 _Don’t cry again, Parrish,_ he thinks, which is a futile effort because the tears are already falling. He is surprised he still has any; the body is 60% water and he’s pretty sure he cried out 50% of it last night.

The tears have one advantage, though. Ronan’s face softens and he shifts on the bed, giving Adam room, which he takes gratefully. With an angry noise Chainsaw flies off, annoyed at being displaced.

“I keep thinking of all those time my father hit me,” he says quietly. Ronan’s side is pushing into his, lined up perfectly. “And I keep wondering if any of them hurt this much. And I keep wondering, if you combined every single punch that I got over the years into one, and if I got hit with that giant punch, if it would hurt as much. And I really don’t think it would. Nothing in my entire life has ever hurt as much as this does.”

Ronan doesn’t say anything. Ronan never does. Ronan lets him figure things out on his own, stays with him so Adam has something to cling to. He clung to Ronan. Clung to Ronan who was strong and full of magic and the creator of beautiful things. Adam hadn’t wanted to break in front of him.

Ronan lost Gansey too.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He shifts, and Ronan lets him kiss him.

* * *

When they emerge Noah is back. Him and Blue are lying on Gansey’s bed, on their sides, facing each other. He had always been sort of confused by their relationship, but seeing them entwined with each other seems much more natural than seeing her with Ronan.

“Hey, Noah,” he says.

Noah sighs. “Life is supposed to stop hurting when you’re dead,” he says. Blue’s nose is still buried in Gansey’s shirt.

Adam sits next to Blue and Ronan sits on the other side of Noah. It is not comfortable, because this bed was not made for four people, or three people and one ghost. Or three people, one ghost, and a memory that is bigger than them all.

They stay like that for a very long time. The ones who had been left behind.


End file.
